To cope with the exponential growth in wireless data traffic, it is anticipated that substantially denser deployment of base stations or wireless access nodes will be required in the future. The feasibility of a very dense deployment of wireless access nodes is predicated on the existence of a backhaul network that can provide high-data-rate transport for each individual access node in the network. From the point of view of maximizing capacity, optical-fiber-based backhaul solutions are probably the most desirable ones and are most suitable for new constructions. However, in existing buildings and infrastructure, the cost of installation of new fibers to every access node in a very dense network can be prohibitive.
An alternative to optical-fiber-based backhaul solutions is a wireless self-backhaul solution, where the same access spectrum is used to provide transport. With self-backhauling, an access node serves not only its own assigned user equipments (UEs) in its vicinity but also its neighboring access nodes as a relaying node in order to transfer data towards and/or from an information aggregation node in the network. A group of self-backhauling access nodes can form a multi-hop mesh network. Access nodes cooperatively transfer each other's traffic to and from the aggregation node.